Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani largely-skipped Iowa and was out of the media loop, got some bad publicity and has seen his poll numbers sag. So his strategists decided to roll out a NEW theme: 911.

Haven’t we heard that song before?

But the Mayor & Co. (partially influenced by the turbulence and uncertainty in nuke-power Pakistan) are returning to pushing The Basic Brand:

Mr. Giuliani’s retooled stump speech compares the Sept. 11 generation to the generation that won World War II. He is running a new television advertisement that shows firefighters atop the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center site. And this week, Mr. Giuliani, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, seized on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the suicide bombing in Pakistan to warn audiences that it “reminds us of the kind of world that we live in.”

“For me this is a particularly personal experience,” Mr. Giuliani said in Florida as he discussed the assassination of Ms. Bhutto on Thursday, “because I lived through Sept. 11, 2001, and then I lived through the attacks in London a few years later.”

Mr. Giuliani’s decision to return to the issues of Sept. 11 and terrorism before the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3 comes after months in which his campaign sometimes seemed to struggle to try to find a way to talk about the attacks without seeming exploitative, while broadening his message to fight the impression that he is a single-issue candidate.

Exploitive exshmoitive…This is politics. You do whatever works..

If Hillary can run around with Bill and double-team other candidates, then Rudy can try to use verbal visualization to get voters to remember how truly courageous he looked during the immediate aftermath period when President George Bush was either uninspiring or totally missing in action as he flew around the country.

Sensitive to criticisms like one Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, leveled — that for Mr. Giuliani a sentence was “a noun and a verb and 9/11” — the campaign worked to show other dimensions. Over the summer and fall he made policy proposals, talked about his record as mayor of New York City, and reached further into his biography to highlight his career in the Justice Department in the 1970s and 1980s. For months, he was more likely to talk about supply-siders than suicide bombers.

Now, though, as Mr. Giuliani’s standing in the polls has slipped and he risks being sidelined by his decision not to compete fully in the Iowa caucuses, his campaign is returning to his signature issue. The shift began this month when he retooled his stump speech in Florida, with more references to Sept. 11 than usual. A campaign video shown on the Internet and at rallies includes an image of two terrorists in head scarves with guns. And he is running a minute-long advertisement focusing on Sept. 11.

“It is part of my life,” Mr. Giuliani said this week about the advertisement. “It is part of my life that helps to define me. It isn’t the only part of my life. But it would seem to me that maybe the critics want you to, like, remove a part of your life in which people have every right to draw judgments about how you would handle a crisis, how you would handle a difficult situation, how you would handle terrorism.”

But, as the New York Times notes, it’s possible Mr. Giuliani’s moment has passed.

Some polls suggest that Mr. Giuliani may not have a decisive advantage on the issue of terrorism. In a New York Times/CBS News poll in September, Mr. Giuliani’s supporters were asked if they thought he would do a better job fighting terrorism compared with the other candidates running for the Republican nomination. A quarter of them said they thought Mr. Giuliani would do a better job than his opponents, but the large majority — 61 percent — said they would expect Mr. Giuliani to be about the same as the other candidates when it came to fighting terrorism.

But the Giuliani campaign is clearly hoping that news coverage of the chaos in Pakistan will refocus attention on the threat of terrorism, which it thinks is a strong issue for Mr. Giuliani but which has receded in recent polls of voters’ top concerns.

Perhaps.

But Giuliani’s big problem is going to be that he has referred to 911 so often that the “slogan” has lost its force with many voters and has become a topic of derision not just with Biden but with many commentators (in both parties) and late-night comedians (just wait until they get back on the air in January…). He is danger of being the Johnny-One-Note Candidate.

The Pakistan crisis — which is likely to grow on several fronts in coming months — could make voters prefer candidates with greater foreign affairs experience, or those who talk a tough game on terrorism.

Even so, Giuliani’s big push to brand himself Mr. Toughie on terrorism has lost some of its OOMMPH due to its being used way too often — and the fact that he’s now being followed by critics who allege his pre-911 performance is being challenged by a group of firefighters’ relatives who say his decisions contributed to some firefighters’ deaths.

Stories about critics of his pre-911 performance will likely blossom as time goes on, because these critics most assuredly will eventually run TV ads…which will then spark TV stories and print stories that will give the paid advertising some free advertising.

The biggest problem for Giuliani is that GOP voters have looked at him and are still shopping. Although he’d be formidable in an election, he has to get through the primaries first.

His 911 leadership and image of courage opened the door for a sale — and now he has to close it.

Any salesperson knows: to make a sale you have to overcome all objections.

Using the same theme that has been used for more than a year most likely won’t do it — even if unforeseen events make the country look around for a strong leader.